Tuesday, May 26, 1998 Last modified at 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, 1998

New Asteroid Policy

THE GOVERNMENT IS TRYING to avoid a repeat of the headline-grabbing waste of time that the stories in March about the possible killer asteroid turned out to be.

One day we read that Asteroid 1997 XF11 would come uncomfortably close to Earth - and would possibly collide with it - on Oct. 26, 2028. The next day we learned that astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory conducted new calculations that indicated the mile-wide rock would come no closer than 600,000 miles away.

The government now asks astronomers whose work is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to keep asteroid and comet discoveries private for two days while additional calculations are made.

NASA would receive the findings and would wait another 24 hours before making them public.

That sounds reasonable to us. Jumping the gun and releasing information that is based on faulty calculations benefits no one. Verifying data before announcing it is a sensible thing for scientists - or anyone - to do.